Training Underwaters with Bob Bowman

Training Underwaters with Bob Bowman

During his International Swimming Hall of Fame induction last weekend, Coach Bob Bowman found the time to take part in a coaches clinic.

In this clip, Coach Bowman talks about training underwater dolphin kicks.

Here are a few takeaways…

🐬 Leon Marchand takes 7 dolphin kicks off every wall.

🐬 “He never doesn’t do 7 kicks on any set.”

🐬 Regan Smith takes 8 kicks off every butterfly wall and 6 or 7 off every backstroke wall. On every set.

🐬 “It’s a finning motion. It’s not a pushing motion.” 

🐬 They like to overload by vertically kicking with weights.

“The most important thing that we’ve done recently are sets where I kind of build in the underwaters…which is hard training of the underwaters…a speed endurance kind of training.”

At the end of practice, with fins on…

4 Rounds:

1×25 free swim cruise
1×25 underwater kick hard
2×25 free swim cruise
2×25 underwater kick hard
3×25 free swim cruise
3×25 underwater kick hard
4×25 free swim cruise
4×25 underwater kick hard

All of them are @ :20 short course yards.

Coach Bowman makes it very clearly that shallow water blackout is a real, life-threatening thing and you should not try this exact set with young kids. They need a very modified version of this. This is what the best 400 IM swimmer in history does - not a 12 year old club swimmer.

He also makes sure to point out that this is something they have been building into. The intervals used to be slower. The rounds fewer. He’s been building this set up throughout his blocks of work.

“We’ve had great success with this type of training.” - Bob Bowman

You know what other type of training is mandatory when it comes to swimming fast? 

Resistance training.

Cords, chutes, racks, towers, socks, and sponges. Even propellers. 

Join Brett Hawke & Sonny Trigg this Sunday evening (8:15 PM Eastern) for an hour long talk all about resistance training: how to and how often you should be utilizing all the different types of resistance equipment.

Come ask unlimited questions.

Sign up here for the price of lunch.